Graffiti joins the ranks of high art with New York show

The illicit graffiti art movement of the 1970s gains mainstream acceptance
with a major exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York

Spray-painted at night on a Lower East Side handball court, the "Howard the Duck" mural showed the comic book character peeking from behind a trash can with the words: "Graffiti is a art, And if art is a crime, Let God forgive all."

That 1978 work helped propel the illicit graffiti art movement out of the city's subway and into the mainstream. Fittingly, a canvas recreation of that mural is a part of a major exhibition on graffiti art opening at the Museum of the City of New York.

The New York "City as Canvas" exhibition focuses on works from the city that were collected over the years by East Village artist Martin Wong, who befriended and mentored many of the graffiti artists and promoted their once-renegade art form. Wong's collection of more than 300 such works was donated to the Museum of the City of New York before his death in 1999.